{day 13} black moments

the first act - the introduction - allows you to peek into the story line and characters. you understand aspects of human relationship and become connected to the hero because he’s shown himself trustworthy. you also see specks of conflict and immediately position yourself against the antagonist. and somewhere, somehow, the hero makes a choice that serves as a catalyst for the story. suddenly, we’re moving.
in the second act, you begin the roller coaster of emotional intensity. the hero, because he’s human, makes mistakes. the human, because he’s the hero, makes those mistakes right and continues in his journey. and the antagonist? he’s still there. most likely making the hero’s life miserable. here is where we invest in the story.

and can you guess who is the antagonist in your story?

at the end of the second act, the character - for a brief moment - loses hope.

and so do we.

this is the black moment.

surely they can't get out of this situation. surely, this problem is too gritty...too ugly...too messy to fix.

which makes the black moment so devastating. plot twists, sudden deaths, lost hope - this all falls into the category of black moments. as the audience, our belief in the hero stays, but we question whether or not he can get out of this problem. it just seems too...big. too...raw.

too dark.

until the final act - the resolution. this doesn’t necessarily mean everything wraps up in a nice neat bow, sometimes it’s still messy and unresolved - at least to our american standards of storytelling.

but every story has three acts, and every life has multiple stories.

and this is where we’ll rest, because far too often, we close our eyes to this truth.

we lose the power of shedding light into the dark spaces and finding beauty. we shudder at the discomfort it brings and bite our lips against the tears.

i think there’s a redeeming quality in sitting and resting in the space between normalcy and chaos, though. and if we aren’t willing to embrace our story - we can’t expect Christ to use it.

we all have multiple stories within our life-narrative. how has He used your black moments for your good?